China Turned On

Preface

Standing at the top of Tiananmen Gate on a Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1989, looking out over vast and desolate Tiananmen Square that was still under martial law at the time, I realized once again why I am so enamored with China. Thrilling, frustrating, fascinating, disappointing —China is a mystery, even to the Chinese. The public outcry for freedom and democracy and the violent military repression of 1989, in some odd and terrible sense, characterize the extreme ups and downs of China's history since the founding of the People's Republic more than 40 years ago.

The massacre on the streets of Beijing was the government's brutal way to reclaim a country that it had lost. The sharp political confrontation that led to the crackdown ...